Letting Go of Letters

Tags

Adopted daughter, adoptee, Archives, Correspondence, Decluttering, Letters, memories, Nostalgia

“Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
January has flown, but February is also a great month for new beginnings. Inspired by Marie Kondo, queen of the Declutter World, I vowed to sweep through the entire house and prune the excess, reduce the redundancies, eliminate the irrelevant. It’s not the first time I’ve embarked a declutter campaign, but this time, I am being non-negotiable. My new motto: OHIO (Only Handle it Once). Years of selling stuff at neighbors’ yard sales, donating to charities, giving things away: I still felt hopelessly cluttered. The “things” grew back, multiplied, maybe even reproduced at night while I was sleeping.
Correspondence collections are close to my heart, harder to part with than books, photos, or just about anything else. Because it would be tough, I decided to start there. I recently tackled a column of banker boxes that resided in a closet, unopened, for several decades. I’d do my heirs a favor by going through, keeping a precious few letters, and taking the bulk of them to the recycle bin.
As an adult adoptee, I’ve always believed that the best way to know where to go, one must see where one has been.
“The past is not dead. It is not even past.” —William Faulkner
Not surprisingly, most archived letters were from my parents, both biological and adoptive. Giovanni Cecchini, the birthfather I got to see three times after I was adopted, was a Navy photographer during WWII. When he and his new wife Margaret moved to Amelia Island, Florida, he became a well-known photographer in the town of Fernandina Beach. He gardened and photographed for many years before his death in 1998. I travel yearly to Amelia Island to visit Margaret. On 12/29/91, Giovanni wrote “Another letter from me — lucky you (I guess).”
My birthmother Velma and I had a long correspondence, and I came across her epistle of 2/13/94. She wrote “Dearest Daughter, I had to peek at my Valentine on Friday (I sent one to her every February) but put it away until Monday…Your four parents are very proud of how you grew up to be beautiful with many talents.”
My adoptive dad’s WWII letters provided the material for my book From Calcutta with Love-The WWII Letters of Richard and Reva Beard (published in 2002 by Texas Tech University Press, due to be re-issued by Pajarito Press in 2020). He also wrote to me every Sunday until his death in 1997. His letters were filled with reports of his life with my adoptive mom Reva, observations about everything from world events to the weather. On February 18, 1990, he wrote “Dearest Elaine: This week has featured several wonderful springlike days, but today and to some extent yesterday were more like typical February weather. It has been dull, overcast, and just cold enough to be raw and uncomfortable outside — I know, I tried walking around the lake and even the Canadian geese looked discomfited.”
I am reading through the boxes of letters, keeping a precious few but relegating most of the epistles to the recycling bin. Typed and penned words from the past made time fall away. I was reminded of a time when letter-writing was the way to keep in touch. Those missives kept us close despite the miles in between. Now, with Email, Skype, Facebook, WhatsApp and other channels of communication, letters are nearly obsolete. With their passing, we will have lost something irreplaceable. On the other hand, think of that person who’d love to hear from you, not instantly. Perhaps it’s not too late to revive the custom of letter-writing.
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Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on life as seen through adoption-colored glasses. Do you enjoy writing letters? Comments are welcome!

The Goodbye Baby gives an insider view of growing up adopted.

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Book Review: Sing for your Life

Tags

adoptee, Biography, Daniel Bergner, Martin Luther King Jr., Musical Career, Obstacles, Opera, Overcoming, Ryan Speedo Green

“I know why the caged bird sings.”—Paul Laurence Dunbar

As a writer of novels, I find life stories endlessly fascinating. That said, some are more interesting than others. As told to and by author Daniel Bergner, Sing for your Life, the biography of Ryan Speedo Green, is definitely in the latter category.
Ryan Speedo Green, a man with the heart and voice of an opera singer—a voice to be recognized only later—grew up in hard scrabble circumstances. Neglected son of mostly absent parents, he began life in a trailer park and later in a house across the street from drug dealers. Until music became part of his life, he was wild and out of control. By age twelve, he was in solitary confinement at a juvenile detention center. His future looked bleak.

How could someone like this rise to performing major roles at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and in Europe? Tracing Green’s journey from the mean streets of a nomadic childhood, Sing for your Life explores the challenges facing an African-American performer in the world of professional opera.
Green’s is an astonishing journey, one that was aided by dedicated teachers and mentors. Green’s teachers have stories of their own. One of the most pithy accounts is that of Mrs. Hughes, Green’s elementary school teacher. A short Italian Irish woman, her life-long ambition was to be a teacher.

As a third grader, Mrs. Hughes lined up her dolls and stuffed animals and led them through lessons. Years later, her dream of becoming a teacher became a reality. After years of teaching “regular” classes, she was given a room of “special” students. Ryan Green was one of them. Unruly and defiant, he threw his desk at Mrs. Hughes. She refused to be upset by his behavior, commenting that if Ryan wished, “he could learn from the floor, since his desk and books were down there.”
Later in the day, Ryan turned his desk upright and began to pay attention. This diminutive woman meant business. Mrs. Hughes, who had posted a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. in her classroom, had her students memorize the lines

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Mrs. Hughes was the earliest of mentors, and possibly the most influential, to help Ryan on his circuitous journey to the opera stage. Others helped him with language and diction, preparing solos for auditions and eventually to becoming the opera star he was destined to be. In 2011, at the age of twenty-four, Ryan, beat 1,200 other selected singers to win a nationwide competition hosted by New York’s Metropolitan Opera In the end, his formerly absentee father came to see him onstage. From that point on, his career soared.
I especially related to Speedo’s triumph over early adversities. As an adoptee, I began life with five years spent in tumultuous circumstances. (To learn more, check out my memoir The Goodbye Baby-Adoptee Diaries). But you don’t have to be an adoptee to relish this heartwarming, inspiring biography. National bestseller Sing for your Life is a great read for anyone who relishes tales of “race, music and family.”

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Join Elaine on Mondays for reflections on life as seen through adopted-colored glasses.

Comments invited!

Decades of diaries became my memoir, The Goodbye Baby

 

Adopting a New Year

Tags

adoptee, Albany, Friendship, Holidays, New Mexico, Niverville, Remembering, Renewal, Santa Fe, The New Year, Travel, Upstate New York

I’ve always believed that if you want to see where you’re going, it’s advisable to see where you’ve been. This holiday season allowed me to do just that…

I’m in love with a new part of America! (New to me, that is.) My friend Deborah Aydt Marinelli, a soul sister with whom I spent years of my much younger life,invited me to spend Christmas holiday with her in Niverville, New York. Because my sons and grandchildren wouldn’t be coming to visit until the end of December, I decided “Why not?” It would be only the second time I hadn’t spent Christmas in Santa Fe. The first time was when I travelled to India to research a novel. (That’s Clara and The Hand of Ganesha, to be completed in 2019).
Deborah is one of my most brilliant and accomplished friends. She’s a PhD in literature, a professor, world traveler, author of over a dozen books, mostly young adult novels. After losing her beloved husband Larry in the spring of 2018, she came to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to revisit old, formerly familiar places. We spent time together. Our mutual Santa Fe years, in the 70s and 80s, had created in us a deep bond, one that survived the 30 years that had passed since we’d last seen each other face to face. She knew my children when they were in elementary school; I considered her son and daughter as part of my own family.

Kinderhook Lake from Deborah’s window

When I accepted her gracious invitation to visit for Christmas, I fully expected to help her with estate and business matters. Having been through the process of losing a husband, I would be the supportivel amanuensis. Instead of that scenario, however, she treated me to a tour of the area around her hometown of Niverville, New York.
We enjoyed a magical performance of The Nutcracker in Albany. Other days found us at a matinee of the new Mary Poppins movie, and a beautiful program of Lessons and Carols at a Dutch Reform Church. I went with her to a Friends meeting in Chatham, we relished lunches at little general stores and country inns, feasted on shepherd’s pie at the Beckman Arms Inn in Rhinebeck, New Yorkthrough. The Beekman Arms has hosted many luminaries throughout the centuries, including President George Washington. Deborah invited nine of her friends on the 25th and we enjoyed a magnificent turkey dinner with lavish trimmings.

The Egg Performance Space in Albany, NY

After Christmas day, we traveled by car, bus and the subway to meet a friend for lunch in New York City. After lunch, we walked all over Greenwich Village and the West End, including along the iconic Highline. We passed by the former brownstone apartment of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, popped into galleries, found post-Christmas 80% off sales at small boutiques. Two sweaters for the price of one? Who could resist?
We drove through the countryside to attend events.The rolling land around Niverville and Albany is lovely. Forests, farmland, fields of sheep and llamas: a refreshing change from the high desert environment of northern New Mexico. We passed by the home of Robert Frost, Bard College, the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), the Village of Red Hook. Many villages, boroughs, and hamlets exist cheek and jowl in this corner of our country. Except for the often overcast skies of Winter (I’ve resided in the sunny Southwest too long), I could live there quite happily.

The Beekman Arms in Rhinebeck, NY

Nine days flew by. The visit, all too soon, came to an end. The best part had been reuniting with Deborah. I invited her to the sunny Southwest for Christmas 2019, and we vowed to keep in closer touch throughout the year. I’ve always believed that if you want to see where you’re going, it’s advisable to see where you’ve been. This holiday season allowed me to do just that. Discovering upstate New Year, an old friendship made new again, walking around The Big Apple: all of this comprised a grand finale to 2018.
May YOUR 2019 be full of health, happiness, prosperity and productivity. May we bridge the gaps with those who do not share our beliefs. As Gandhi put it, may we be the change we wish to bring. HAPPY NEW YEAR one and all!

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What was the best part of your holiday? Feedback invited! Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on life as seen through adoption colored glasses.

A Gift to You – The 12 Days of Adoption

Tags

adoptee, adoption, celebrate, Christmas, discover, family, friends, Holidays, wounded, writing

NOTE: Once again, I’m immersed in writing a novel, therefore, I’m republishing one of my favorite posts from the past. A reminder of what I appreciate, a song of gratitude. Adoption is a mixed blessing, but a blessing nonetheless. Here’s wishing you and yours a beautiful holiday season!

With much affection, Elaine

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An Adoptee’s Song:
“The Twelve Gifts of Adoption”

With Christmas and Hannukah seasons upon us, music fills the air. From the radio, Mall Muzak or live musicians, we often hear “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” In your imagination, listen to the melody… then read with an open heart as this ADOPTEE offers a different take on a familiar song…

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Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on life through adoption colored glasses. Please let us know what you’re most grateful for this holiday season!

 

Adoption: Still my “Something”

Tags

adoptee, adoption, adoption child, discover, empower, healing, separation, wounded

Note from Elaine: I continue to write adoption stories. Clara Jordan, heroine of my recent suspense novel All the Wrong Places, travels from Virginia to New Mexico hoping to locate an unknown birthmother. Instead of finding roots, she falls in love with a two-timer named Henry, a sly character who betrays her. She runs further into trouble as she searches petroglyphs for traces of a mother she’s never known. All the Wrong Places is available from http://www.pocolpress.com or from Amazon. My novel-in-progress, Clara and the Hand of Ganesha, takes our protagonist to the shore temple of Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu, India. Participating in NaNoWriMo, I plan to finish the first draft this month. Stay tuned!

 

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It’s been said that trauma is not a mystery, that it attaches itself to you in a way that’s hard to undo. My story, as related in The Goodbye Baby, offers living proof. Being an adoptee has added melodrama to my life, created a passion for writing, and ultimately inspired me to take off the masks and to discover who I really am.

Though I was fortunate enough to land in an adoptive family who loved and cherished me, it could not make up for losing that first “mother connection.” My birth mother and I said goodbye before I started first grade, and I waited 38 years for her to come back into my life. I was deeply wounded by the separation.

My struggles have been with feeling abandoned, isolated, and rejected. I’ve worried for years that I will be misunderstood and that I’m simply not good enough- as a daughter, a friend, a partner, a mother, or even as a human being.

With my infant son in Greece

Because of being adopted, I felt small and insignificant. Probably because adoption wasn’t something my family discussed, my negative assumptions became deeply embedded. Throughout my adult years, I accomplished a great deal, but in my mind, I was never admirable. Harmful pangs of inadequacy took root and shaped my outlook, my decisions, my disastrous romantic choices.  Until I re-read my diaries, I never realized that I myself had invented the self-damaging myth.

How did I deal with my adoption-induced complexes? My adoptive parents had to raise a delinquent teenager who drank excessively, stayed out too late and attracted bad boyfriends. As I grew older, I tended to be an over-achiever: running nine marathons to lower my finishing time, yet always “keeping score” and endlessly coming up short.

Thirty years ago, when I first started to write about my adoption, the title of my book was Reunions. My plan was to meet both my biological parents and write about finding the missing puzzle pieces. I met my original parents, but the reunions were not what I hoped for.  The pieces were in place but the puzzle remained. Only writing The Goodbye Baby completed the picture.

After both sets of parents died, I found that looking into the past gave me the wisdom to see where I’d been and how to go forward.

 

 

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What my adoption has taught me is that the world reflects my inner reality, that my happiness or unhappiness depend on my actions and not on outside forces. I’ve learned that it is never too late to make a fresh start.

I have always known I would be a writer. In the summer of 1962, I wrote in my diary,

“Some of this frantic recording is wasted energy. How can I have a future as a writer?…I need to find something to say.”

The theme of adoption is that “something.”

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Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption and sneak previews of her newest novel, Clara and the Hand of Ganesha.

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Three Steps toward Gratitude

Tags

adoptee, adoption, Attitude adjustment, Daily Practice, Deepak Chopra, Gratitude, Henri Nouwen

Resentment and gratitude cannot coexist, since resentment blocks the perception and experience of life as a gift…Gratitude as a discipline involves a conscious choice. I can choose to be grateful even when my emotions or feelings are still steeped in hurt and resentment. – Henri Nouwen

As we begin October, I’m counting my blessings. It’s been a year since a hiking injury resulted in a spinal fracture, and for months I thought I’d never be OK. Months of physical therapy and lots of walking have made me whole again.

But equally helpful has been practicing what Henri Nouwen calls The Discipline of Gratitude. Being out in nature with daily walking, savoring the good parts of every day, and support from wonderful friends: all of that has made a profound difference.

Santa Fe Botanical Garden offers a beautiful place to ramble.

While the issues of adoption never go away completely (You wake up in the morning and you’re still an adoptee), I’ve learned to cut through gloom by using the following tools. The first two mental routines are best practiced during a walk outdoors. The final process is to be done at day’s end.

STEPS TOWARD DEVELOPING THE DISCIPLINE OF GRATITUDE:
1. Walk your brain: This is a technique developed by my friend Beth, who leads a women’s Tuesday-morning brisk aerobic jaunt. After you’ve started walking, imagine a goal and think of five things that will move you toward accomplishing it. The goal need not be lofty: Anything from a chore you’ve put off for too long to applying for a job or writing an overdue important letter. Name your intention and concentrate on the five steps to achieve that goal. Do this throughout your 15 or 30 minute walk, and put the plan into action right away.

2. Practice the “shake it off” mental housecleaning movement: This is another technique best practiced while strolling. When you find yourself dwelling on the dark side, shake either your right or left hand out into the air, as though shooing away pesky insects.

3. Every night before falling asleep, think of five things that you’re thankful for, events of that particular day or conditions of your life in general.
Author, physician, and New Age guru Deepak Chopra maintains that “a gift resides in every moment.” By practicing the discipline of gratitude, one can learn to see those gifts, to find an opportunity behind every problem, and to walk through the darkest hours and come out on the other side.
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Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption and life. And check out her memoir The Goodbye Baby-Adoptee Diaries

Aspen Vista, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Poetry Monday

Tags

adoptee, adoption, appreciation, Comfort, Falling and Rising, healing, Life, Transformation, Wonder

As we approach the beginning of a new season, I’m adopting gratitude, celebrating health, and embracing life. If this sounds overly dramatic, let me explain…In 2017, the first day of Autumn brought a devastating hiking injury that took months to heal. That I’ve mended seems a miracle, and it fills me with appreciation for the body’s wisdom and ability to knit itself back together. In that spirit, I present one of my favorite poems…

“MYSTERIES, YES

by Mary Oliver

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds

will never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say

“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,

and bow their heads.”

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Join Elaine every other Monday for reflections on adoption and life. Your comments are welcome!

In Pursuit of Roots

Tags

adoptee, adoption, adoption child, celebrity adoption, diary about adoption, elaine pinkerton, family histor, family roots, family tree, friends, juniper tree, the goodbye baby, wounded, writing

Dear Readers: Family matters have lately consumed me and there’s been no time to write. Enjoy this re-posting of thoughts originally published in 2012. The lack of “roots,” though I’ve come to grips with it, continues to be a challenge. If you’re an adoptee and have ever felt the need for a family tree, please send your feedback. Like other adoptees I’ve met, I’m still searching for the answers!

Last night I watched a program on public television that reminded me of being an adoptee. The emptiness and longing for a tribe of my own, a feeling I wrongly assumed I had put to rest, was back with a vengeance.

“Finding your Roots,” which featured three celebrities exploring their family trees, was all about searching to find a place where you belong, piecing together the past, and learning where and how your ancestors lived. The show was well presented and dramatized the interviewees’ journeys to discover their their true heritage.

My outsider status syndrome immediately kicked in. How fortunate, I thought, to even possess a genealogy that you could call your own. Growing up as an adoptee, I longed for years to claim a so-called “family tree.” I’d been to Italy with my birthfather Giovanni Cecchini. After our reunion, we travelled to Abruzzi, where he was born. I met my non-English-speaking cousins, aunts and uncles. Following the journey to Italy, my birthfather’s second wife (not my birthmother) helped me secure a detailed listing of paternal relatives.

With my adoptive mom’s help, I’d was able to chart out a family tree for my ancestry record, going back just a couple centuries. Those two charts were intellectual exercises, but I couldn’t relate to them.

Two family trees, but neither really fit who I was. Though I had the DNA of the biological parentage, I was shaped and molded by my adoptive parents. Rather than give in to an emotional meltdown, however, I thought long and hard about why the “Finding your Roots” program tried to break my heart. Tried but failed.

When I was young, I made up a myth about being adopted.The underlying theme was “Oh, poor me.” That was a way of reacting to everything, seemingly as fixed as the stars in the Big Dipper or the belt of the constellation Orion. However, I was not a fixed star and I could shape a new truth.

Juniper Tree. Everything, seemingly as fixed as the stars in the Big Dipper or the belt of the constellation Orion. However, I was not a fixed star and I could shape a new truth.

 

I decided to emulate the indomitable juniper tree. It will send roots down 25 feet in order to survive. Here’s a description from the National Park Service’s website:

“Junipers grow in some of the most inhospitable landscapes imaginable, thriving in an environment of baking heat, bone-chilling cold, intense sunlight, little water and fierce winds. Often they appear to grow straight out of solid rock.”

This is the kind of family tree that will serve me well.

Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption and life. Your feedback is invited!

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On the Trail Again

Tags

adoptee, Adoptee Recovery, adoptive parents, anger, birthparents, Empowerment, Hiking, Injury, Santa Fe National Forest

As an adult adoptee, I’ve learned that inward healing leads to outward recovery. Along the way, I found that the obstacles in my path cause regression. Whenever life presents a new crisis, I’m thrown off balance. Because of last Fall’s serious injury, I experienced not only a physical but an emotional setback… a “pre-adoption recovery” state of mind.

After all four of my parents died, I found that looking into the past helped me move into the future.

Balance ~ that’s what I lost eleven months ago, when a hiking injury threw me totally out of commission https://tinyurl.com/yb2ruz3k. Months of physical therapy and healing techniques such as acupuncture, Feldenkrais, water aerobics, strength classes at the gym, stationary cycling and neighborhood walks helped lessen the pain from a compression fracture. However, until I faced the main culprit – anger – I would not really get better.

Why anger? I fell during a hike, something that could happen to anyone in difficult terrain. My anger was mainly aimed at myself. For taking my eyes off the tricky uphill path. For a disastrous moment of inattentiveness. For not taking an easier hike, which half of my fellow hikers had opted for on that September 22nd of 2017. My anger was about the injury itself – a compression fracture that would take months to heal and would lead to related lumbar and joint issues.

Anger is a terrible thing. Unless one deals with it, it corrodes. It can seem there is no bottom to the Canyon of Despondency and that one can never escape from this negative emotion. Until I admitted that unresolved issues about adoption were the root of my unhappiness, I was doomed to be under the cloud of angry, hurtful emotions. Only when I looked the demons in the eye could I begin to recover.
I had to admit my sadness that I did not grow up in a biologically related family
Only after meeting my biological parents, (who were not “parent material”) did I fully realize how lucky I was to have been adopted. After five years of being shuffled about in foster care, I landed in a forever home. Adoption adds so much to a child’s life: parents who chose her (or him), security and stability, a room of ones own. But it also takes away: blood ties, growing up with people who share your DNA, a family tree that is connected to you. As a baby, you, the adopted one, resided for nine months in your mother’s womb; you were connected at a primal level.

When I was adopted at age five, which I describe in The Goodbye Baby-Adoption Diaries – I was afraid to ask questions. Instead, I grew up longing to know where I came from, why I was relinquished. Years later, I felt I’d answered the questions and silenced the demons. With my injury, however, the old anger crept back in. Only when I acknowledged my anger and worked to release it did I start to mend. I forgave everything and everybody, including myself. Last week I ended my 11-month layoff. from hiking. With my neighbor Joalie, I hiked up the Tesuque Trail in Santa Fe National Forest to a beautiful lookout point. Because I’d cleaned out my feelings of anger and resentment, the physical knots in my back left me. Being out of pain and back in touch with nature was an incredible reward.
What I learned from my injury and long, slow recovery was the importance of releasing anger. Perhaps it took the injury to make the lesson sink in. I can recommend the following. Do not take a fall, but instead spend time with your inner self to discover who you really are. YOU are worth it!

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Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption and life. Guest bloggers with adoption-related stories are invited to inquire. If you’ve ever had an injury that served up a life lesson, we’d like to hear your story.

Adoptee feels at home in Ukraine

Tags

adoptee, Babi Yar, Cathedrals, Dneiper River, Europe, Gardens, Hope, Opera House, Parks, Travel, Trees, Ukraine

St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its 13 glimmering domes are visible from all over the city.

Good to be back!
I’ve just returned from an unforgettable journey: 11 days sailing up the Dneiper River in the mid-section of Ukraine. The largest European country, Ukraine is a beautiful, fertile land known as “the breadbasket of Europe.” This was a memorable trip filled with beauty and history, much of that history quite sobering. “Ukraine” means “border,” and the unique position of the eastern country of Europe has shaped its destiny. The Russian empress Catherine II annexed Ukraine in the 18th century, but, under Nikita Kruschev, in 1954, it became its own country in 1954. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the far eastern edge of Ukraine became increasingly unstable. A large part of this “edge territory” is Russian-speaking. However, it is part of Ukraine. The “Revolution of Dignity” in 2014, a statement of Ukranian pride, resulted in violent deaths in the center of Kiev, the country’s capital.

My travel buddy and I decided on Ukraine while it was still a possible destination. But this is a post about the bright side of Ukraine, not its struggles. There is much to learn, much to admire. In Viking River Cruise style, we sailed mostly at night and explored cities and countryside by day. Our first port was Odessa, built on the site of an ancient Greek colony. Many cultures settled here – Crimean Tartars, Turks, Russians and Germans. Our ship docked, and we spent several days tooling about the city, admiring its elegant Baroque buildings, elaborate facades and balconies, tree lined boulevards. The variety of huge old trees (chestnut, poplar, acacia, linden) rivaled the architecture. Roses of brilliant hues rule the city’s parks and gardens. We spent time going up and down the Potemkin steps, mostly by funicular.

One night I went to the magnificent rococo opera house for a production of “Swan Lake.” Other highlights were the Odessa catacombs and the vast Akkerman Fortress, a 13th century citadel.

We made our way north, visiting Kherson and Zaporozhye. The Island of Khortitsa, former stronghold of the Cossacks, was another highlight, including modern-day Cossacks performing acrobatic feats on horseback. Their athleticism and commanding style was thrilling to observe.
After more village and city visits, we ended up in Kiev, capital of Ukraine. St. Sophia Cathedral was a highlight of this magnificent city. Hard to say whether it is more impressive on the outside, with its thirteen gold domes, or the inside with towering gilded and mosaic rotunda ceilings. The final tour was through Jewish Kiev and included “Babi Yar,” the site of WWII massacres. We also went to Podyl, one of the oldest synogogues in the city. The journey ended on an upbeat note, as Podyl included a school. Children preparing for summer camp were playing outdoors, a fitting symbol of hope for the future.

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Join adoptee/author Elaine Pinkerton every other Monday for reflections on adoption and life. Your comments are invited. If you’d like to contribute a guest post related to the adoption theme, please contact her through this website.